I disagree with Brian Burke by being even more Burke than Burke is

by Quisp on Jul 27, 2010 10:42 AM PDT in CBA

All due respect to Brian Burke, I believe he is wrong about one thing. The quote:

Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke isn't a fan of Kovalchuk-like contracts - ProHockeyTalk - Hockey - NBC Sports
"No one is going to be able to prove circumvention until one of these guys retires," the Leafs GM said. "And by then we'll be in a new CBA. But I'm comfortable that a number of these players are, in fact, going to walk. "I don't believe these players are going to play in their mid-40s. And I don't believe they're going to play for what they're making in those final years. So it defies logic. It may not defy the CBA. But it defies logic to think that players are going to serve the term of all these contracts . So that's why we don't do them. And a number of teams don't do them. If the league thinks that this is one that they need to look into, then we support that."

That assumes that the only way to prove circumvention is to demonstrate that this one guy (Kovalchuk) will retire before he gets to the end of his contract. Obviously, one can't prove that Kovalchuk will not play till he's 44 anymore than one can prove Kovalchuk is not immortal. Yet the argument, "we just don't know if he's immortal, we will have to wait and see what happens," as the basis of an employment contract that extends to the end of time, is incontrovertibly stupid. And we wouldn't have to wait till the end of time (or his death) to prove it either.

More this afternoon...

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That's the famous Sergio Leone portrait photo of Burke, right?

Seriously, it has always struck me as intuitive and common-sensical that these front-loaded contracts are circumventions of the CBA. We didn’t used to have them before the current CBA, and now we do. What has changed? Duh.

I have some sympathy for those who protest that the league didn’t punish the Hawks for the Hossa contract, so why should the Devils be punished for Kovalchuk. But again, common sense should make it obvious that there is some difference in degree.

by DougX on Jul 27, 2010 11:20 AM PDT reply actions

he new CBA will be interesting, either they’ll be exact contract limits in length at a certain age, or more than likely the Cap Hit won’t be the average of the contract, but that years salary.

by Throwdeuce5150 on Jul 27, 2010 11:42 AM PDT reply actions

Burke is absolutely correct. There is absolutely no way a guy who has 100m dollars, and made 10m a year in his prime is going to be slogging around the ice at the age of 40+ for 550k a year, literally risking life and limb.

There are a number of ways to close this loophole, in fact over at broadstreethockey lindbergh31 proposed a pretty simple and effective method to stop these circumventions, which would be to stipulate a maximum variance in any one year from the cap hit, which could be 30-50%. That would easily eliminate the practice of tacking on low cost years at the contract end purely to lower the cap hit.

by Gizmoitus on Jul 27, 2010 2:42 PM PDT reply actions